The planned masterpieces were under way, but it just so happened that all three guaranteed creators of masterpieces were put out of commission. Romm broke his leg, Alexandrov had trouble with his blood pressure, and Mikhail Edisherovich had too much to drink at somebody's wedding. There was a catastrophe-the Soviet film industry was at a standstill. All the sound stages at Mosfilm were shut down, the bats moved in. The only room with lights burning was the studio director's office, where he sat up at night and awaited Stalin's call, because Stalin liked calling at night.
The phone would ring and the trembling director would give the 250
leader and teacher the lastest report on the condition of the masterpiece makers. You might have thought that the man wasn't a studio head but the chief surgeon of a hospital. Stalin was angry, his theory wasn't being put into practice, and Stalin didn't like that. The fate not only of the studio head but of Mosfilm itself hung ·on the condition of Romm's leg. Stalin could have shut down the studio and let all the cinemas in the country show his favorite Tarzan and nothing else, except perhaps the newsreels.
Poor directors. Stalin watched each one like a hawk. They froze under his gaze like rabbits before a snake. And most shamefully, they were proud of it.
Stalin had his own projection room at the Kremlin, and he watched films at night. That was work for him and he worked, like all criminals, at night. He didn't like to watch alone and he made all the members of the Politburo, all the leaders of the country, so to speak, join him. Stalin sat behind them all, in his own row, he didn't let anyone sit in his row. I heard all these details more than once. Once, according to a director friend of mine, the leader and teacher had a brilliant new idea. Stalin was watching some Soviet film and when it was over he said, "Where's the director ? Why isn't the director here? Why don't we invite the director ? We'll invite the director. I think, comrades, that it will be beneficial to invite the director. If the director were here, we could have thanked him, and if necessary we could have given him our critical comments and wishes. Let's ask the directors to be present at our screenings. This will be beneficial for the directors and for their work."
It so happened that the first to be so honored-to watch his own film with Stalin-was my friend. He is a man who is well educated but not very brave, and he has a squeaky, high-pitched voice. He's no warrior, neither in spirit nor in body, but he did try to be a decent man, and whenever he found his film work too oppressive, he directed a play or two to give his unheroic body and spirit a rest. Stalin didn't keep such close tabs on the theater and one could breathe a little more freely there.
They brought the director to the Kremlin. He was searched fifteen times on the way to the screening room, where he was seated in the first row, next to Minister of Cinematography Bolshakov. An industry 25 1
that was producing three films a year still had its own minister. I would give that minister three glasses of milk a day for the ulcers that his nerve-racking job had caused. They say the minister wrote his memoirs when he retired. I wonder what he called them-Crime Without Punishment?
The screening began. Stalin, as usual, sat in the back. Naturally, the director didn't watch his film and didn't listen to my sound track.
He was listening to what was going on in the back row. He had turned into a giant receiver; every squeak that came from Stalin's seat seemed decisive, every cough seemed to toll his fate. That's how my director friend felt and how he later described it to me. This screening could carry my friend way up high-ah, how he wanted that-and it could spell his downfall.
During the screening, Poskrebyshev, Stalin's long-time secretary, came in. He was a faithful, experienced workhorse. Poskrebyshev went up to Stalin with some dispatch in his hand. The director was sitting with his back to Stalin, not daring to turn around. Therefore he didn't see any of this, but he could hear it. Stalin's angry voice proclaimed loudly, "What's this rubbish?" It was already dark in the screening room, but my friend saw black. There was a noise. My friend had fallen on the floor. The guards rushed up to him and took him out.
When the director came to, they explained his error to him and told him that Stalin had also said, "The film's not bad. We liked the film, but we won't invite directors; no, we won't. They're all so highstrung."
So my friend didn't fly way up high as he had hoped. And they didn't give him a new pair of trousers for the ones he soiled, either.
But that's all right. As the poet Sasha Cherny said, "Instead of selling their souls on credit, they should let their souls go about without pants."
In this other story that I know, I will mention the hero's name, since he's named me once or twice in various articles and speeches, not to mention many reports to higher-ups. Posters in our stores exhort us:
"Customer and clerk, be mutually polite." Inspired by these splendid posters, I will be polite. I'll be the customer and my hero can be the clerk. I'm talking about Tikhon Khrennikov, chairman of the Com-252
posers' Union, and therefore my chairman too. Then why am I the customer and he the clerk? Well, first of all, the clerk is always more important than the customer. you always hear him say, "There are lots of you and only one of me." That's the way it is with Khrennikov-there are lots of us composers and only one· of him. You really have to look hard for the likes of him. And second, Khrennikov's father was a clerk, he found work in some rich merchant's store. That's why our immortal leader always put down in every application: son of a worker behind a counter. I think that circumstances played the decisive role when Stalin was looking for a "boy" to run the Composers'
Union. First, as I was told, Stalin studied the applications of all the candidates for the post of administrator and then called for their photographs. He spread them out on the desk and after some thought, poked his 'finger at Khrennikov's face. "Him." And he was right. Stalin had a wonderful instinct for such people. "A fisherman sees another fisherman from afar," our old Russian proverb runs.
Once I saw a charming pronouncement by our leader and teacher. I even wrote it out, because it's such a perfect characterization of Khrennikov, I had the impression that Stalin was writing about him.
I apologize for the quote. "In the ranks of one part of the Communists there is still a condescending disdain for trade in general and for Soviet trade in particular. These Communists, if they can be called that, see Soviet trade as a second-rate, unimportant thing and workers in trade as lost people . . . . They don't understand that Soviet trade is our own, Bolshevik business and workers in trade, including workers behind a counter; if they work honestly, are champions of our revolutionary Bolshevik work."